While a bit reductionist, it's pretty much right. Tariffs can work if, and only if, the market believes the tariffs will last long enough to spin up entire industries, and then recoup that investment.

The problem with Trump's tariffs is that everyone knows they are relatively short term. At most, they'll last until the end of Trump's presidency, and even that's assuming that they don't get struck down by the courts, or Trump flip-flops on them like he does everything else.

Without the ability to credibly ensure their ongoing existence, tariffs fail their only real purpose of incentivizing domestic manufacturing, instead acting as a regressive tax on your population.

"We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers." https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is...

"we find that tariff increases are associated with an economically and statistically sizeable and persistent decline in output growth" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7255316/

"Overall, the evidence implies that tariff increases depress economic activity and trade once their indirect and general-equilibrium effects are taken into account." https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34852/w348...

Hey, but the vibes of the consumer, right? Except the vibes of the consumer is at an all time low ( https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/02/04/a-year-into-...) With a notable exception being republicans, i.e., the death cult who screamed "No New Wars!" and "Kamala will start WW3" and are not sucking off daddy Trump's Iran war.